A Study on the Evolution of Language Style in Japanese Academic Articles Based on Text Mining

A study of text mining of Japanese academic articles to analyze the linguistic style changes in Japanese academic articles. A dataset of Japanese academic articles is constructed and the text data is preprocessed. The linguistic feature model of Japanese academic articles is constructed, and the linguistic features of vocabulary, sentences, and other measures are extracted based on the original text data for linguistic style analysis. By analyzing the changes in word length, sentence length, and lexical richness of Japanese academic articles between 1981 and 2020, the linguistic style evolution of Japanese academic articles during this period is explored.The average word length of Japanese academic articles between 1981 and 2020 is in the range of [1.8329, 1.9507], and the word length dispersion is in the interval of [0.338, 0.362]. The frequency of monosyllabic and disyllabic words has shown a slow decreasing trend, but they still remain the most frequently used word classes in Japanese academic articles. The average sentence length increased from 43.58 to 49.27, which is associated with an increase in text complexity and formality. The percentage of sentence lengths of 1~15 and 16~30 is around 50%. The proportion of sentences with length >45 is generally on the rise, and the linguistic style of Japanese academic articles tends to be more and more standardized and rigorous.The vocabulary density of Japanese academic articles during the 20-year period is in the range of 0.7936-0.8711, and the type-case ratios are in the range of 6.9418-35.8726.The vocabulary of Japanese academic articles in the period of 2001-2005 is the most abundant.